CoughDrop AAC Beta is Now Open

For over a year we've been working with therapists and specialists to make sure our AAC app CoughDrop is on the right track. We've put our prototypes in front of as many people as we can to keep improving. At this point I think we’re ready for a bunch more feedback, so we’re opening up free registration for anyone during a public beta of the CoughDrop app.

CoughDrop, in case you didn’t know, is an AAC app (and board repository) that is trying to be more than just a button-mashing speech synthesizer for your iPad (though it’ll be that too). It’s web-based, which means it will run a lot more places than just iOS — basically anything with a modern web browser should work. It’s also connected to the cloud, so you can auto-sync edits across devices, optionally record usage logs for detailed reports, and communicate with team members as part of the app. That’s a lot of things you won’t find in other AAC apps, and we have even more to add in the future.

We’ve spent a lot of time trying to get the editing interface right because we want it to be simple to take somebody else’s board and add it to your board set and personalize it. Nobody likes spending so long modifying buttons one by one while switching between different views, and getting a board collection up to snuff traditionally takes hours (believe me, I’ve done it). Additionally, anyone can create boards and decide to share them publicly, so hopefully there will be less starting from scratch in the future.

During this beta there will probably be bugs. We’ve already recruited a lot of help with testing, but I’m sure something somewhere will be borked for someone. If that unlucky person is you, please let us know right away so we can get it fixed. The Support link on the bottom of the home screen will take you to our ticket-reporting system. We take the quality of our app very seriously, but we need your help in tracking down issues.

We’re very excited to get CoughDrop into the hands of more people, so the beta period will be free and open to everyone for at least three months, no premium features held back or anything. After the beta period you’ll be able to purchase CoughDrop for a competitive yet-to-be-announced price as either a long-term purchase or a monthly subscription, whatever works better for you.

If you try it out and decide to use it as your communication app, we’d love to know! We’ll bend over backwards to make it a positive experience for you because we know first-hand how important a system like this is. We’re willing to provide free long-term subscriptions to those who take a chance on us now during the beta.

There’s plenty more to do in the future, but for now we want to get the word out: CoughDrop is here and ready to raise the bar on what an AAC app should offer. Join us!